


then dream

by cardist



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: American Sign Language, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur and Eames are the same age, Coming of Age, Dreams, First Love, Flashbacks, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Memories, Non-Chronological, Oral Sex, Songfic, Teen Romance, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24455836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardist/pseuds/cardist
Summary: I wore infamy growing up with a neighbour one window across. I poisoned his lips and from there, gradually, like the sun sailing across a day's sky, his eyes, his thoughts, hopes and dreams. I consumed his nights, his thighs, his sighs, wrote poetic slander, white lies, shared three-worded trade secrets in a lover's manner, then told him we had no future together.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	then dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queuebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queuebird/gifts).



> A humongous thank you to Q (queuebird) for the thorough beta of their own gift....! This was supposed to be to celebrate the end of their semester, which happened like weeks ago. Or something. It was also supposed to be 200 words. 
> 
> (gestures 3 strikes, batter out)
> 
> This was entirely inspired by Fall Out Boy's "Fame < Infamy" which I hadn't actually listened to.... I only read the lyrics. 
> 
> Underage tag: They're both the same age (16-17 during flashbacks).

Sundays were like dents in time, stained with medieval colours.

Eames placed an unlit cig between his lips, watching the kneeling figures bow in the pews. 

Arthur pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. "We can go," he said, very quietly.

"Sorry. I just-- you can go first if you want," Eames murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets. He wanted to stay. See how they sold the idea of God. "Catch up with you later."

Arthur turned his gaze towards the preacher, uneasy. For a few moments they didn't move. A few moments more, and Eames knew Arthur planned to stay too.

Frankly, he was relieved. He didn't actually want Arthur to leave. He pressed into Arthur's side. The backs of their hands aligned, fingers tangled.

"Okay," Arthur said, looking down at their hands before looking back up, a little less fear in his eyes, and a little more trust instead.

Eames smiled.

The preacher's suspicious glare in their direction only made Eames hold on tighter.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames lay in his king-sized bed, twelve years later, gazing out at a billion-dollar view of LA nightscape through floor-to-ceiling windows, thinking about Arthur.

"What are you still moping about?" his agent kept asking, picking up the dirty laundry, pocketing any loose cash he found. “You’re too rich to feel blue, sonny.”

Eames turned his gaze toward the ceiling and ran his hand through his hair, exhaling steadily. He tried to recall the last time he had felt both rich and happy.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Endless picket fences, spots of cyan pools, green lawns leading eyes to horizons. A perfect neighbourhood for perfectly crooked neighbours.

Arthur was new in town, but not new to the game. He fit in fast. His peers liked his blasé personality, handsome face, dry sense of humour. There was nothing to dislike about him; he had a flair for adapting to new environments effortlessly.

Arthur had moved in next door. 

"My father's a salesman," Arthur said, surrendering to small talk. He was on Eames's porch, a tray of homemade lasagna in his hands, which he proffered politely. Eames took it with a brief smile.

"What does he sell?" Eames asked.

"Cars."

Eames nodded. "I sell things too."

"You're 16," Arthur pointed out.

"I sell dreams," Eames said, mostly just for fun.

He hadn't expected Arthur to play along. "How much for one?" 

Eames smiled, looking Arthur up and down. "Eh, not much, just a kiss."

Arthur smiled back. They were quiet for a while. At some point Eames was sure their proximity was making Arthur uncomfortable, so he took a few steps away and leaned against the doorframe, balancing the plate of lasagna awkwardly, and they stayed quiet some more.

They both started when Arthur's mother called from the other porch for Arthur to help with the piano.

Eames looked down at the lasagna, thinking that would be the end of it. He murmured a thanks and was preparing to close the door, but then Arthur said, "I don’t think I can afford a dream yet. But how about bubble gum for help with the piano?"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames balled up the paper and flung it into the trash can. It was 4AM and he had absolutely nothing. Just a piece of gum of the wrong flavour and “Mariage D'amour” stuck in his head. No big hit movie script. No love song lyrics. No fairy tale bullshit. Nada.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames flipped open the wallet. It was thin, the leather weathered, scratched with time. There were two five-dollar bills, a library card and a photo of a calico cat. 

"You have a cat?" Eames had asked.

"Had," Arthur said, scowling. "You stole my wallet?"

"Is it really stealing if I'm returning it?"

Arthur looked inside. He lifted his hand, palm up. "You took a twenty."

"There was no twenty," Eames said, frowning.

"From the back pocket of my jeans, the other day."

Eames smiled, sheepish. "The one you were wearing or the one that was draped over your chair?"

"I should have known the groping was a coverup," Arthur said.

Eames gave Arthur two twenties. "A gentleman does not grope."

Arthur rolled his eyes, pocketing the money. "Schrödinger," he said, out of the blue.

"What?" Eames replied.

"My cat's name."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames had once brought a stray calico cat back to his hotel room and called her Schrö-danger. He had her vaccinated and cleaned the next day, played with her for an hour, and then gave her away because she reminded him too much of Arthur. The fire in her eyes, the smoky pelt, the socked paws, the pleading sound begging him not to leave.

Shit. He needed some air.  
  
Eames wore sunglasses, an LA Dodgers cap, and a bushy beard before stepping out into a sunny day, his mind set on getting a pack or two of Marlboro Gold Edge.

The kids at the bodega talked a different language, smiled a different way, crooked teeth in different places. There was a tabby cat sleeping in the canned goods section. A lady at the counter signed something to the cashier, who looked back, befuddled.

"She would like to know the time, and if you have any Virginia Slims left, sir," Eames translated, before putting bills on the counter to pay for his German black beer, cigs, and the lady's Evian.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Arthur had taught Eames to sign because Arthur had been sent to sign school with his cousin Ariadne, in a previous life.

It was a way for them to communicate with each other through their opposing bedroom windows without having to resort to shouting or serenading. 

(Back then, Eames didn't have a personal cell phone. There was one for the entire family, and it was only for emergencies. He didn't mind though, signing with Arthur like this was... an experience that made long days end softer, that made mocking laughters and hurtful words a little easier to bear.)

Eames turned his lamp on and off three times to get Arthur's attention before signing, _wanna watch a movie?_

Arthur tilted his head, ruminating a bit, before putting down his book and signing back, _sure_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Their first kiss was at a movie drive-in. There weren't stars overhead but there was a tingling feeling at the back of his mind that he would never forget. 

"Look, this boy’s been kicked around all his life. You know --- living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That’s not a very good head start. He had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That’s all," said Henry Fonda, on the screen.

And Arthur had looked at Eames steadily, eyes hazy but questing, fingers lingering on his collar. Screen light delicate on his face. 

Secrets to Eames, from that moment onwards, would always look a little like this.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Nowadays he wore three-piece suits, even alone in his kitchen, pretending to be someone else, feeling better as someone else, feeling nothing as someone else. 

The party music was too loud, the lights dim. The place smelled too much like chlorine and smoke to be anything like a home. A young girl with too many stars in her eyes clung onto his arm giggling "tell me your secrets" between hiccups, and he stood there thinking about the day he was kissing Arthur breathless in waning sunlight until the silhouette of their PE teacher appeared in the doorway of the empty classroom.  
  
  
  
They were forced apart, their yearning fingertips the last they had felt of each other.  
  
  
  
Eames had been locked in the basement. All the lightbulbs were shattered and the walls smelled like death. He stayed down there for a week that had felt like eternity.

But Arthur suffered far worse. They changed his bedroom so their windows weren't facing one another's, ripped school books he shared with Eames, had him physically examined for marks of sin, asked him invasive questions, endlessly, until he was exhausted, confused, scared, shattered, broken. Stripped him of his human rights under the excuse of rebirth, purification.

Later on, Eames had sat in an austere office submerged in overcast shadows, listening to a therapist explaining how the two south ends of a magnet would push each other if held too close. And he had thought, throughout, about Arthur sitting in another office, going through the same thing.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames fucked the girl into the mattress, but told her no secrets. They got off the bed from separate sides and slipped back into clothes in silence. He lit a cig, and she dragged her fingers down his naked back, murmuring sweet sycophantic nothings. He suppressed a flinch with too much ease, ignored her for the rest of the night.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He told Arthur a dream in exchange for the kiss. 

A Harvard diploma, a proud mother, a beach house in Florida, an office with a view, a successful blind date at a fancy restaurant, a night of laughter, a ring on a girl's finger.

Arthur hated it, all of it, even the way Eames had described it. He said, "Eames, you're you, you're a writer. Don't you fucking dare care about what they say. They don't know. They can't even begin to dream. They don't know what your future looks like. How could they? They don’t know the first thing about you. When the fuck did you stop dreaming?"

He kissed and kissed and kissed Eames until Eames's lips tasted saline, but from whose tears Eames didn’t know. 

"Why wasn't I in it?" Arthur had asked, much later, in that quiet and transitory moment between night and day, dream and reality.

"Cause it's not my dream," Eames had answered, after Arthur had drifted to sleep.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He wondered if Arthur found a girl. It was masochistic, but Eames thought about it a lot.

He wondered if Arthur still thought about him, whether Arthur might have heard Eames's name on the television, on a talk show or something, and tuned it out, switched the channel, told his beautiful and perfect wife, "I knew that guy in high school."

It drove Eames mad to think about it, but he did anyways.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"What's your return and refund policy?" Arthur had asked.

"Twelve years. With your receipt."

"You never gave me a receipt."

"My mistake. Here."

Eames gave Arthur a red die he was fiddling with at the time.

"Where?" Arthur said. He looked at his watch. Eames couldn’t see but somehow he knew: it was 08:23AM, August 15.

"Back here," Eames said, pointing across the street at the Cobbs’ backyard. The Cobbs had a rather quiet and reserved son, Dom, who was in Eames’s math class. "Cobb's abandoned wasteland of a backyard." 

Because Eames refused to have it anywhere else. Everywhere else (the drive-in, their houses, their windows, the places they shared furtive kisses) was better without the certain stains of a promise he knew no one was going to keep.

"Okay," Arthur had said.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames woke up with a jolt. 

Had that been a dream? A memory? A message? He grabbed his phone.

It was 5AM. August 14.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Arthur was picking the pickles off of Eames's burger when Eames said, "I wrote something and submitted it to a literary journal."

Arthur smiled. "Shit, that’s great! What's the turn-around?"

"Three months."

"What did you write?"

"Flash fiction."

"About what?"

"You, naturally."

Arthur sat back, expression turning indecipherable. "Eames."

Eames ducked his head. "Too much?" he asked, sheepish.

When he looked up though, Arthur was smiling softly, just enough for hints of dimples. "Not enough."

"You're impossible to court," Eames said.

"Are you going to eat your fries?"

"Have at them, heartless fiend."

Arthur did, without much reservation. But then they sat quiet, until Arthur said, solemn and earnest: "Honestly though. Me?"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It had always been about Arthur.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The flight was too long, and time stretched the way the horizon did across the field of clouds. There was no beginning no end just this limbo Eames seemed stuck in.

He vomited three times. Washed his face in the first-class restroom, found terrified eyes staring back in the mirror, clouded with gentle fear, whispered _what ifs_ , the feeling of ghosts crawling up his spine.

When he got off the plane he couldn't even stand. 

All the passengers were already down the concourse, and he had to hold onto the railing, take a few deep breaths, wait until his vision settled, then he collapsed on a nearby chair. He watched the shadows of airplanes taking off, skittering across the faux marble floor.

He had to stand, he told himself.

He had to. He just had to.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The first time they had sex hadn't gone well. Eames remembered tucking his knees to his chest and contemplating saying sorry.

Maybe he did say sorry.

Because Arthur said something like _it's okay_ and touched Eames's shoulder blade and said...

Eames couldn't remember what he said. 

The next time they tried something, they decided to take it slow. Eames was on his knees, a hand on Arthur’s trembling thigh, his lips against the crown of Arthur’s dick, just kissing and sucking lightly. He’d never done anything like this before. Arthur tasted sweeter than he had imagined, and he looked sinful, flushing up to his ears, eyelids half-mast, moans and gasps escaping him.

There was something about the sight of Arthur looking this way, sounding this way, that made Eames want to push for more. He should have known he wasn’t really ready, but he tried. Someone had taught him that by closing his left fingers around his left thumb, hand curled into a fist, the gag reflex would be suppressed. But no one told him how sore his jaw could get, or how his knees would hurt on a wooden floor, or how sometimes his canines would catch and Arthur would hiss, not in the good way.

Eames gagged too. And he was going to apologize because shit, there were tears in his eyes, and he was coughing and it wasn’t nice. But then Arthur’s hands cupped his face and Arthur was there and he covered Eames’s mouth with his own, and he whispered against Eames’s lips, “god, Eames, never apologize. I-- you’re good to me, I want you, I want you so much.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
His bus ticket promised a shorter voyage than the flight, but it lied. It felt infinitely longer.

But then, when the surroundings started to look familiar, and his memories of home and childhood and Arthur started to converge with the present, somehow his nerves eased. He waited patiently and quietly for the two rolls of film to cross, for reality and dream to merge.

Nostalgia to kick in.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_I wore infamy growing up with a neighbour one window across. I poisoned his lips and from there, gradually, like the sun sailing across a day's sky, his eyes, his thoughts, hopes and dreams. I consumed his nights, his thighs, his sighs, wrote poetic slander, white lies, shared three-worded trade secrets in a lover's manner, then told him we had no future together._

 _We thank you for submitting to 3-seconds. Unfortunately, your piece does not conform to our style..._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It was way past 8AM when Eames arrived. He couldn't really tell, his watch was still stuck on LA time and his phone was dead.

But it felt like 5PM, and the late afternoon sun was warm on his back as he made his way to the Cobbs’.

Nothing much had changed. The sounds, the space, the smells. The place was a memory come alive.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
But of course Arthur wasn't there. The sun set, and Arthur wasn't there.

Eames kicked a pebble and adjusted a crooked fence plank. He was aware that there were two kids playing, but now they were staring at him.

"Pippa?" said a little boy who was hiding behind a little girl. "Don't he look a lil’ like the one in the movie?"

"Eames?" someone said. It was a figure behind them, stepping out into dimming light onto the patio. It took Eames a second, but he did end up recognizing the quiet eyes that belonged to Dom.

"Hi." Eames didn't know what to say, he'd never really spoken to Dom before.

Dom nodded, but for what Eames wasn't sure. The man ushered the kids in, and then he followed them, looking over his shoulder once, to beckon Eames to follow as well.

When Eames was at an arm’s length away from Dom, Dom turned and looked at him gravely before saying: “He came back every summer expecting you to be here. But you never showed up. It’s turned him a little bad-tempered.” Dom gave Eames a cursory look before turning back to the door, pausing at its handle and sighing. 

“Brace yourself,” Dom said.

Eames coped with most of his confrontations by pretending to be someone else, feigning indifference, putting up a wall. But this was different. This was Arthur.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames was most like Eames when he was in hiding, when no one was watching, when it was him stripped from both infamy and fame.

Arthur was Eames's only exception.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Dom opened the backdoor, a trapeze of light stretched across the deck, the screen squeaked, and the kids tripped in. And there in the hallway, was Arthur.

He didn't look all that much different. There was a tightness in the jaw perhaps, more wisdom and darkness in the eyes, but overall Arthur felt like he hadn’t really changed. He only looked… particularly cross. He was glaring at Eames like he could burn him to a crisp just from sheer will.

Dom shifted on his feet and rubbed his palms together. "Pippa, go tell your mom to make coffee."

"Eames," Arthur said, shortly. 

"Arthur."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eames’s sign language had been limited to whatever Arthur taught him, and Arthur mostly taught him quotidian things like the signs for hunger or boredom.

One winter night Eames had searched online for ways to express other things. He tried them out on his own, mimicking what he saw on the screen, letting the tutorial videos loop. 

Sometimes he’d glimpse in the direction of Arthur’s window and then stare. It was dark and still, and the curtains were drawn. It had been that way for days. (And it would be that way for months to come.)

Eames switched his lamplight on and off three times, slowly. He watched each flicker reflect in his window, like the inception of a spell. 

Then he signed what he had just learned to say. He pointed at himself, then lay a finger on his chin, before pointing at Arthur’s window. 

_I miss you_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He didn’t know what to say, so he surrendered to small talk. "I'm an actor now."

"I know," Arthur responded shortly, gaze still sharp and dangerous.

Eames swallowed hard. "I live in Los A--"

"I know."

"I have a place on Sunset Bo--"

"I don't care."

"Uh. So, How have you been--"

"I graduated from Harvard law school magna cum laude and found a job in New York in a prestigious firm. I live in the past, hate the present and look forward every summer when I come back home to visit friends and family, to get my refund for this bullshit dream you sold me. Why the fuck do you sound British?"

"I--" But Eames was cut off by Arthur slamming a red die onto the table.

"Now you're going to give me my money back. In full."

Eames shook his head. He responded to the question first. "I've got a part in a movie as a British guy."

Arthur breathed in deeply.

Cobb put the coffee on the table and left the room.

"Um--" Eames started.

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"What?"

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"I--"

"It's a yes or no question."

"Uh--"

"Try again. Are you seeing anyone?" Arthur looked more worried than vindictive now.

Eames frowned and replied, "no! I'm not."

Arthur relaxed visibly. They stayed quiet a bit more. They could hear the children running around upstairs, opening faucets, yelling after their mother. 

And then, Arthur said, quietly, "okay. Then I would like to have my first kiss back."

Eames blinked. And for a few moments he didn't know what to do, felt caught off-guard. How was he supposed to answer that?

But then Arthur closed the distance between them and did it for him instead. A gentle push of the forehead and then an even gentler kiss.

"Screw the dream analogies," Arthur murmured against his mouth, almost pleading. "Teach me how I can sell you the idea that I love you." Arthur looked up into Eames’s eyes before ducking his head down a little. “Because I don’t know how and it’s fucking eating me alive.”

Eames kissed his eyebrow, brushed his hair away, held him closer.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It was a distant memory. It was night. It was a story that could have started with once upon a time. 

The first time Eames saw Arthur was through his bedroom window.

Arthur was reading a book under orange light, and then somehow he had spotted Eames and started staring back.

Eames had smiled awkwardly, then mouthed, _can't sleep._

Arthur had scrutinized him with a thoughtful scowl, before mouthing back what Eames always thought to be:

 _Then dream_.


End file.
